Penal Substitution Atonement (PSA) theory has been in the news again lately (online/social media). As an Evangelical Calvinist (see V1&V2 of our Evangelical Calvinism books, and my articles-mini-essays on the topic) I have pressed what TF Torrance refers to as the āontological theory of the atonement.ā Many evangelicals and Reformed folks think that PSA in fact is the Gospel simplicter. And so, to deny PSA would be to deny the Gospel itself. But as I have demonstrated over and again at the blog, the background to PSA theory isnāt as prima facie biblical as its proponents make it sound. The ātheologicalā framework that fomented what we think of as PSA today is largely rooted in the Federal (Covenantal) theology of the early Reformed theologians. It has humanity placed into a relationship with God that is necessarily framed by a forensic premise (i.e., the covenant of works). This forensic premise, or covenant of works, according to Federal theology, is ultimately fulfilled for the elect of God, when Jesus comes and meets the conditions of the covenant of works (that Adam and Eve) broke, thus restoring the legal connection to God that heretofore had been lost to humanity since after Eden. And it is this Federal (Covenantal) relationship that is given metaphysical orientation by the scholasticism Reformed commitment to what Richard Muller identifies as a Christian Aristotelianism. Suffice it to say, in nuce, PSA represents a theory of the atonement wherein humanity is genetically related to God based on a metaphysics of a Divine-Law-World relation; indeed, which requires that in order for fallen humanity, and the elect therein (think decretum absolutum āabsolute decree of election-reprobationā), to be justified by God, that the Son of Man must become man, die on the cross, extinguishing the wrath of God, paying the legal penalty for sin, and allowing the elect humanity to come into a right and legal standing relationship with the triune God; particularly, the Father (whom the PSA proponents emphasize as the āLaw-giver,ā per their juridical system).
Alternatively to that, one of the Fathers of us Evangelical Calvinists, John McLeod Campbell, a Scottish theologian of the 19th century, kicked back against the premise of the PSA position vis-Ć -vis the nature of the atonement, and against the Westminster theology that had codified the theological framework that funds the PSA position, particularly as that was being pushed in his context in the Church of Scotland (before he was excommunicated), as he gives us re-framing of atonement theory where the relationship between God and humanity ought to be framed first as thinking of God as Father rather than Law-giver. It was this re-framing that ended up getting Campbell kicked out of his beloved Church of Scotland, and which led him to minister elsewhere, as an independent of sorts. When you see what his view was, in a nutshell, as we will visit that now, as George Tuttle recounts that for us, you might be shocked to think that this would have the type of doctrinal gravitas required to get someone officially banned from their own denominational and local church. Tuttle writes of Campbellās framing on the atonement:
Herein lies one of Campbellās major objections to founding a view of atonement on the concept of justice āwhether distributive or rectoral. Both systems visualize what he calls purely legal atonements, that is atonements, the whole character of which is determined by our relation to divine law. The real problem of atonement, however, is not merely to discover a way in which we may stand reconciled to God as a law-giver. The question contemplated in scripture and to which the Gospel is an answer is not how we can be pardoned and receive mercy, but how it could come to pass that the estranged can be reconciled. Godās intention is, as St. Paul declared, āto redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.ā (Gal. 4:5). The relation between a judge or a governor and the accused subjects is vastly different from that of a parent to erring children. To distinguish the former from the latter is to move from an artificial atmosphere of impersonal display of benevolence to a warm and living relationship of love, Campbell therefore could not rest in any conception of the atonement which involved, as he says, āthe substitution of a legal standing for a filial standing as the gift of God to men in Christ.ā This is not to say that Campbell denies the truth of a legal standing any more than he denies the inexorable demands of divine justice. Just as justice is brought with the concept of God as love, so the validity of a legal standing is brought within that of a loving relationship. Justice has its ultimate source in the love of God. When the loving God is honoured, justice is honoured also.
Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā The atonement is thus revealed retrospectively as Godās way of putting right the past, and prospectively as introducing us to a life marked by a filial relation to God eternally. Both are celebrated by believers, both must be included in their thought concerning the nature of the atonement.[1]
One might think this ought to be unremarkable. And yet in the face of meddling with the Westminster God of consensus, the Aristotelian-formed God who relates to the world through a metaphysic of a decree of law (e.g., covenant of works etc.); who must remain the āunmoved moverā of monadic adoration; it is this very meddling, even if all the theologian is doing is attempting to shift the mindās eye to the fact that God is first Father of the Son before He is ever a Law-giver/Creator, that will get you canned like Campbell was.
Some might imagine that the Campbell thesis was a minority report. In his particular environ it was at his time. But outside of his particular ecclesial and geographical environ (and even amongst it, among some other key theologians and pastors like himself), his view became a dominate one. Even overcoming many of the places and people who were initially against his alternative and kerygmatic reading of Holy Scripture. Even so, today, by the retrieval of many in the evangelical and Reformed sphere, we are only getting the Westminsterian Report. This simply wasnāt the case, even historically (which I have demonstrated elsewhere).
In the end what matters, though, isnāt whether this or that doctrinal position was the majority or minority report in the history. What matters for the Protestant Christian, is whether or not a position corresponds more proximate with the witness of Scripture. I would contend, and have done so vociferously over the years, that the Campbellian theory of the āFather-Son-Atonementā framing is indeed the most biblically correlative and theologically resplendent view presented. If you donāt to hold it: repent!
[1] George M. Tuttle, So Rich a Soil: John McLeod Campbell On Christian Atonement (Edinburgh: Handsel Press, 1986), 82-3.
James B. Torrance, brother of Thomas F. Torrance, offers a very nice and concise synopsis of the entailments of what me and Myk Habets (along with our various 
authors) have identified as an Evangelical Calvinism. JBTās synopsis comes as he wrote the foreword for a book titled, So Rich a Soil: John McLeod Campbell on Christian Atonement by George M. Tuttle. Here, JBT is explicitly referring to the themes of John McLeod Campbellās theology, particularly as that developed as an alternative to the juridically/forensically framed understanding of the Calvinism that we find in Federal (Covenantal) theology; indeed, as that gets codified in the Westminster Confession of Faith, among other confessions and catechisms. As JBT notes, Campbellās theology, as an alternative iteration of Reformed theology, indeed, a Scottish Theology, challenges the assumption that God primarily relates to humanity through a covenant of works, rather than a relation based on triune love, thus leading to an ostensible Christian spirituality that leaves the would-be saint always wondering about their standing before the Lawgiving God. With further pinpointed clarity, JBT, also shines a light on the implications of thinking of Godās relation to humanity through a Love-giving God, as that is resplendent in Campbellās theology, and how that rightly alters the way the seeking person might approach God; indeed, as an adopted child in the loving and caring arms of the Father of Life who freely gave His life for the world, in His dearly beloved Son, Jesus Christ. If you are looking for an alternative theology, Reformed even, that first sees God as Father, before Creator and Lawgiver, then what you will find in an Evangelical Calvinism might be just what you have been longing for.
Here is JB Torrance at some length:
A few years ago, while teaching for an academic year in the Vancouver School of Theology, I came across Dr. Tuttleās doctoral dissertation in the library of the University of British Columbia, on āThe Place of John McLeod Campbell in British Thought Covering the Atonement,ā and was so impressed by it that I encouraged him to have it published. McLeod Campbell was a remarkable Scottish theologian ā thought by many to Scotlandās greatest ā whose theology was hammered out on the anvil of his pastoral experience. Here was an invaluable study, not only of McLeod Campbellās theology of atonement, but also of his influence on subsequent thought, not least on nineteenth century Anglican theology. Now Dr. Tuttle, from his own rich experience as a pastor and teacher in the training of men and women for the Christian ministry, has written this splendid study showing how McLeod Campbellās theology is such fertile soil and so relevant for us today.
Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā As a young minister in Row in Dunbartonshire, Campbell was aware of a strong ālegalistic strainā in the religion of Scotland, coupled with an introspective lack of joy and assurance which he believed derived from the high Calvinism of his day, with its doctrine of a ālimited atonement,ā that Christ did not die for all but only for an elect number. Generations of Scots had been taught to āexamine themselvesā for āevidencesā of election. But this had produced an inward looking, too often guilt-ridden, attitude which contrasted so sharply with the joyful triumphant faith and assurance of the New Testament church. So he tells us he made it his early concern to give to his people āa ground for rejoicing in Godā by directing their minds away from themselves to the love of God the Father is revealed in the whole life of Christ, and supremely on the Cross.
Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā He soon came to see that our answer to the question of the extent of the atonement depends on our view of the nature of the atonement. The doctrine of a limited atonement, in the federal Calvinist tradition, especially taught by John Owen, the English Puritan, and Jonathan Edwards in North America, flowed from two convictions about the nature of God. The first that justice is the essential attribute of God, but the love of God is arbitrary, seen in his will to elect some individuals and send Christ to die for them. John Owen had taught that love is not Godās nature, but his will. This, Campbell saw, was not true to the New Testament and the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, that God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, is Love in his innermost Being, and has created us and redeemed us in love and for love ā for āsonship.ā With the ancient fathers, in their negation of Sabellianism, he saw that what God is towards the world in love, in creation and redemption, he is in his eternal nature, as the Triune God.
Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā The second was that in the federal (covenant) scheme, law is thus prior to grace. God is related to all humankind by āthe covenant of works (law)ā and only to some by āthe covenant of graceā in redemption. Hence atonement was construed in terms of the view that God would only be gracious if law was satisfied and sin punished, that is, by Christ fulfilling for the elect the conditions of the covenant of works (law). McLeod Campbell saw that this inverted the Biblical order, that grace is prior to law, that āthe filial is prior to the judicial.ā Both creation and redemption flow from grace, and law is āGodās heart coming out in the form of law.ā Law is the gift of grace, reveals our need of grace and leads to grace. The Incarnation and the Atonement, which must be held together, are the Fatherās act of sending his Son to fulfill for humankind the filial and judicial purposes of creation. Atonement is Godās act of grace in which he takes to himself for us his own divine judgments āin order that we might receive the adoption of sons.ā The filial purposes of creation and incarnation are secured by atonement. Hence atonement must be interpreted in terms of both the Trinity and the Incarnation, āretrospectivelyā removing condemnation on past sin and āprospectivelyā leading to sonship.
Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā In our own day, theologians like Barth, Rahner, Moltmann, JĆ¼ngel and von Balthasar have seen how Western theology has too often operated with concepts of God which owe more to Aristotle and the Stoic Lawgiver, than the New Testament, and has consequently drifted away from seeing the centrality of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. McLeod Campbell discerned this long ago, and saw its implication, both for the pastoral ministry and for our understanding of the doctrine of God, that the sufferings of Christ the Son on the Cross reveal the suffering Love of the Father. āHe who has seen me, has seen the Father.ā
Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Dr. Tuttleās book is profoundly relevant for the contemporary situation both theologically and pastorally in its concern to show that the Gospel is the Good News of God coming to restore to us our lost humanity, āto bring many sons to gloryā ā and therefore good news for every creature.
James Torrance[1]
There isnāt much to add to this. Only that, to my chagrin, as I have been sitting with this above reality since around 2002, and more pointedly since in and around 2007, when I first started reading TF Torrance et al., becoming aware of this development within a Reformed theology, I can really only continue to shake my head. I see so many young and old alike continuously running full speed ahead into a Reformed theology that is indeed shaped by the juridical/legal parameters that Campbell, JBT, TFT, Karl Barth et al., in their own respective ways, have presciently offered a more biblically based alternative to. Whether this be at the scholarly level or popular level, no matter, theologians and laymen/women, continue to harp and joust back in forth; as if the Calvinist/non-Calvinist binary, black and white as it apparently is, in regard to sides, is the only way through this theological malaise. I continue to see the masses in evangelical and Protestant christianities hem and haw, as if they have found the golden scepter of theological truth; and this within, again, their respective binary of Calvinism/non-Calvinismāto boot, with all the theological imagination of a dodo bird (sorry, too harsh? . . .). May the Lord give more eyes to see and ears to hear that in fact God is Father of the Son first, before He is ever Creator. With this realization there is a theological hope that outstrips much of the pablum being fed to the people today. Kyrie eleison
[1] George M. Tuttle, So Rich a Soil: John McLeod Campbell on Christian Atonement (Edinburgh, The Handsel Press, 1986), 6ā7.
God is love. Unfortunately, for some, this entails an inherent Marcionism. Simplistically, this entails the notion that the God of the Old Testament is not the same God we encounter in the New Testament in Jesus Christ. Often people cannot imagine how the āGod of war and wrathā in the Old Testament could ever correspond with the God revealed in the face of Jesus Christ in the New Covenant. But I would simply say that without the God of the Old Testament the God of the New Testament makes absolutely no sense. Jesus came as the Prophet, Priest, King (triplex munus); Jesus came in fulfillment of the Aaronic and Levitic priesthood framework; He came as the Lamb slain before the foundations of the world, as the second and greater Adam, as the seed of the woman who bruises His heel while crushing the serpentās head. Godās wrath is really just an instance of His triune love. God is a jealous God who loves His creation more than He loves Himself (this is a rhetorical hyperbole). As such, when God sees His very good creation in a ruptured relationship with Him, He will not countenance such brokenness. His wrath is conditioned by who He eternally is as Father-Son-Holy Spirit love (which is simply a Self-givenness, one for the other, one in the other, which coinheres in the Divine Monarxia [Godhead]). He created humanity in His image, who is the Christ for us (cf. Col. 1.15); He created humanity in Christās humanity to be in an eternally ascendant and thus elevated and koinonial relationship with Him. The nothingness and concupiscence of sin broke that, and as a result He became sin that we might become the righteousness of God in Him (mirifica commutatio āwonderful exchangeā).
God is love. He loves all of humanity in His vicarious humanity which stood in the gap between He and us because no one else could or would. Jesus, as the Baptizer exclaimed, is indeed the āLamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.ā As the author to the Hebrews (Paul) says: āthere no longer remains any other sacrifice for sin.ā Christ is Godās first human, the firstborn, the first fruits of God for the world/us. This is how we know Godās wrath is first an instance of His love for us, in that āwhile we were yet sinners Christ died for us.ā Godās wrath cannot ever be thought away from or apart from His conditioning triune love. When āour theologiesā fall into that trap we end up with a distorted and nomist view of God, wherein God becomes simply the Judge, and not the Judge judged for us (pro nobis).
Because of this realization I can look out at the world and feel compassion, as if looking longingly at sheep without the Shepherd. My heart genuinely breaks for people who donāt have Christ; as Paul said āI wish all were like me, yet without these chains.ā God desires to show His love in actualized ways wherein all of humanity might indeed ātaste and see that God is good.ā Godās justice is coming, and yet has always already come in the cross of Jesus Christ. The very foundation of the cross is in fact the cruciformed (cross-shaped) triune life of the eternal God. If we donāt approach a reading of the Old Testament from this crossshaped lens we might fall prey to the siren call of the culture writ large as best represented in the thought and activity of Marcion (the heretic).
I often speak ofĀ T. F. Torranceās view of the atonement as theĀ ontological view,Ā which is inextricably related, for Torrance to theĀ IncarnationĀ (which is why his most recent posthumously published booksĀ Incarnation & AtonementĀ came in theĀ orderĀ that they did ā there is a theo-logical and even, dare I say it, necessary relation between the two). Well I just wanted to quote Athanasius directly, so that folks wonāt think that Torrance fabricated such things out of whole cloth. Hereās Athanasius discussing the apparent dilemma God has set before Him given the reality of the āFallā (and the non-existence or non-being that it brought humanity separated from Him), and the fact that not just a ālegalā kind of relation had been violated between God and man through the āFall,ā but in fact an actual corruption of man Himself and the loss of grace as an intricate aspect of manās relation to God had occurred ā manās very ānatureā and even āheartā had been broken to the point of death (non-being and separation from God). Athanasius is sketching the only way the onlyĀ dĆ©nouementĀ possible for God to remain consistent with Himself as the Creator of man in His image; he writes:
. . . Yet, true though this is, it is not the whole matter. As we have already noted, it was unthinkable that God, the Father of Truth, should go back upon His word regarding death in order to ensure our continued existence. He could not falsify Himself; what, then, was God to do? Was He to demand repentance from men for their transgression? You might say that that was worthy of God, and argue further that, as through the Transgression they became subject to corruption, so through repentance they might return to incorruption again. But repentance would not guard the Divine consistency, for, if death did not hold dominion over men, God would still remain untrue. Nor does repentance recall men from what is according to their nature; all that it does is to make them cease from sinning. Had it been a case of a trespass only, and not of a subsequent corruption, repentance would have been well enough; but when once transgression had begun men came under the power of the corruption proper to their nature and were bereft of the grace which belonged to them as creatures in the Image of God. No, repentance could not meet the case. What ā or ratherĀ WhoĀ was it that was needed for such grace and such recall as we required? Who, save the Word of God Himself, Who also in the beginning had made all things out of nothing? His part it was, and His alone, both to bring again the corruptible to incorruption and to maintain for the Father His consistency of character with all. For He alone, being Word of the Father and above all, was in consequence both able to recreate all, and worthy to suffer on behalf of all and to be an ambassador for all with the Father. [Athanasius, On The Incarnation, Ā§7, 32-3]
Rich stuff. Now if youāre into the ākindā of Covenantal/Reformed/Federal Theology that Michael Horton & co. (who seems quite popular now-a-days, see here) articulates, then you might as well throw Athanasiusā insights, just quoted, in the burn pile. Hereās why. Horton style Covenant theology offers a āJuridically-Forensicallyā based view of the atonement ā the kind that would actually fit into the ārepentance-onlyā model that Athanasius says NOĀ to ā that frames what takes place on the cross as a Divine transaction between the Son and the Father. The āLawā (eating of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil cf. Hos. 6.7) has been broken (Covenant of Works), and the Father-Son agree to a pact (Pactum Salutis or Covenant of Redemption) wherein the Son will become a man, die on the cross for particular people (elect), āpayā their penalty (or fee), and give them back to God (Covenant of Grace). On the face that might sound good, but letās think with Athanasius. All that has occurred in the Hortonian view of salvation is essentially to deal with an āexternalā issue and payment (which is akin to Athanasiusā point on repentance). The fundamental problem with this approach, as Athanasius so keenly points out, is that the issue isnāt primarily an external issue wherein a legal repentance will do; the issue is an issue ofĀ nature.Ā ManāsĀ natureĀ was thoroughly corrupted and even lost. The only remedy is for the image of the Father (the Son) to literally become humanity; penetrate into the depths of our sinful souls through His redemptive grace; take that corrupted nature/heart from the manger to the cross to the grave; and resurrect/recreate it into the image of the Father which can only be realized as we areĀ vicarious participants in Christ.Ā The issue is not primarily an issue of a broken āLaw;ā the issue is that we have broken āHearts,ā and only Godās grace in Christ in the Incarnation can reach down into those depths and recreate us in Him. Hortonās approach to salvation does not allow for such thinking. It doesnāt deal with the heart, and thus we are left in our sinsĀ non-being.
**repost, originally posted on February 14, 2011.
Matthias Grebe continues in his trek of offering a critique of Barth through Barth in regard to the loci of election and atonement. In his task he offers up a description, here in summary form, of various atonement theories propounded by the church fathers. He points out, rightly, that the fathers, in the main, (barring Augustine) would have rejected the penal substitutionary atonement (PSA) theory, and instead operated with a Christus Victor model, generally. He argues that the āvictim theoryā (his language for PSA) would not have been countenanced by them, and that instead something like Thomas F. Torranceās theory of an āontological atonementā would have been the consensus patrum among these primarily Eastern ancient theologians. I agree with Grebeās treatment, and thus wanted to share it.
However, the āVictimā theory fails to grasp the breadth of the atonement, especially the second aspect of Christās death bringing humanity back to God. This in itself is problematic and thus led to a legal/forensic and practical as well as a transactional understanding of the atonement in much Western thought, emphasizing the human act of Jesusā appeasement of the Fatherās wrath. There is no doubt that the New Testament presents the death of Christ as a sacrifice (an idea based on the Old Testament cult), but the idea of appeasement rests upon an interpretation of the Old Testament cult in chiefly transactional terms. In contrast, for much Eastern scholarship the ācultus is much less a matter of sacrificial transaction than of mystical transplantation,ā highlighting the death of Christ as the rescue and the cure from sin and the conclusion in the filial fellowship with God. Thus the answer to Cur Deus Homo? is therefore not only āmori missus,ā but also involves Christās entire life, death, resurrection and the ascension of humanity to the right hand of God, as well as the sending of the Spirit of Pentecost. . .. We will argue in this chapter that the atonement is not simply a dealing with something or rescuing from something, but a bringing into something. The New Testament testifies to the fact that we are not only brought out of darkness into light but are made sons and co-heirs of Christ and thus partakers of the divine communion (see Rom 8:17; Gal 4:7; Titus 3:7).[1]
Based on the closing clauses of Grebeās we can see the direction he will be arguing. What he describes as the Eastern orientation over against the Western, in generalities, is key to understanding the type of alternative that an Athanasian Reformed (or āEvangelical Calvinistā) theory of salvation presents. It isnāt that āsubstitutionā is rejected, but that its frame isnāt forensic or āpenal,ā rather it is ontological and re-creational. As such, the nature of the atonement itself is intrinsically tied to the incarnation, insofar that it is the total Christ, from before the foundations of the world, to their re-creation, that the atonement is entailed by. This offers a depth, and thus ontological dimension to a theory of salvation that the Augustinianly hued theory, of the Latin West, generally fails to grasp. Thomas Torrance, as alluded to, thinks, of course!, from the Eastern orientation; even as a Scottish Reformed theologian. Note TFT:
It is above all in the Cross of Christ that evil is unmasked for what it actually is, in its inconceivable wickedness and malevolence, in its sheer contradiction of the love of God incarnate in Jesus Christ, in its undiluted enmity to God himselfānot to mention the way in which it operates under the cover of the right and the good and the lawful. That the infinite God should take the way of the Cross to save mankind from the pit of evil which has engulfed it and deceived it, is the measure of the evil of evil: its depth is revealed to be āabsymalā (literally, āwithout bottomā). However, it is only from the vantage point of Godās victory over evil in the resurrection of Christ, from the bridge which in him God has overthrown across the chasm of evil that has opened up in our violence and death and guilt, that we may look into the full horror of it all and not be destroyed in the withering of our souls through misanthropy, pessimism, and despair. What hope could there ever be for a humanity that crucifies the incarnate love of God and sets itself implacably against the order of divine love even at the point of its atoning and healing operation? But the resurrection tells us that evil, even this abysmal evil, does not and cannot have the last word, for that belongs to the love of God which has negated evil once and for all and which through the Cross and resurrection is able to make all things work together for good, so that nothing in the end will ever separate us from the love of God. It is from the heart of that love in the resurrected Son of God that we may reflect on the radical nature of evil without suffering morbid mesmerization or resurrection and crucifixion events, which belong inseparably together, has behind it the incarnation, the staggering fact that God himself has come directly into our creaturely being to become one of us, for our sakes. Thus the incarnation, passion, and resurrection conjointly tell us that far from evil having to do only with human hearts and minds, it has become entrenched in the ontological depths of created existence and that it is only from within those ontological depths that God could get at the heart of evil in order to destroy it, and set about rebuilding what he had made to be good. (We have to think of that as the only way that God ācouldā take, for the fact that he has as a matter of fact taken this way in the freedom of his grace excludes any other possibility from our consideration.) It is surely in the light of this ontological salvation that we are to understand the so-called ānature of miraclesā, as well as the resurrection of Jesus from death, for they represent not a suspension of the natural or created order but the very reverse, the recreation of the natural order wherever it suffers from decay or damage or corruption or disorder through evil. God does not give up his claim that the creation is āgoodā, but insists on upholding that claim by incarnating within the creation the personal presence of his own Logos, the creative and ordering source of the creation, thereby pledging his own eternal constancy and rationality as the ground for the redemption and final establishment of all created reality.[2]
TFTās long statement offers something of a magnum opus in summary, in regard to the entailments of what we might call an āAthanasianā theory of salvation. But this extensive passage was offered up to help illustrate how it is that a Reformed theologian, of TFTās stature, thinks along the lines that Grebe is describing for us vis-Ć -vis the consensus patrum of the Eastern church fathers. Salvation requires something more than, not less than a forensic frame. If the human condition is fallen, it isnāt simply a bail payment that is required, but an absolute resurrection and/or re-creation of all of reality; primary of which is humanity simpliciter. This is what Western or Latin notions of penal substitution fail to grasp, and what the Eastern fathers understood all too well. If the fallen human being is going to be āsavedā in the depths of their being, and the Western model is understood as the definitive theory of salvation, then salvation has not obtained, and we are of all people those to be pitied. It has not obtained because genuine salvation requires more than a legal payment, since this only has to do with external behavioral failures, it requires a depth ontological reorientation (and thus re-creation) insofar that this represents the relational breach between the triune God and us. Without this new creation of humanity in Christās humanity, in the āwonderful exchange,ā we cannot countenance God who is Holy.
[1] Matthias Grebe,Ā Election, Atonement, and the Holy SpiritĀ (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2014), Kindle ed. Loc., 5312, 5316, 5321, 5325.
[2] Thomas F. Torrance,Ā Divine And Contingent OrderĀ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981), 115-16.
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you soĀ far from saving me, from the words of myĀ groaning? -Psalm 22:1
And about the ninth hour JesusĀ cried out with a loud voice, saying,Ā āEli, Eli,Ā lemaĀ sabachthani?āĀ that is,Ā āMy God, my God, why have you forsaken me?ā -Matthew 27:46
ĻĪµĻį½¶ Ī“į½² Ļį½“Ī½ į¼Ī½į½±ĻĪ·Ī½ į½„ĻĪ±Ī½ į¼Ī½ĪµĪ²į½¹Ī·ĻĪµĪ½ į½ į¼øĪ·ĻĪæįæ¦Ļ ĻĻĪ½įæ Ī¼ĪµĪ³į½±Ī»įæ Ī»į½³Ī³ĻĪ½, ĪĪ»Ī¹ Ī·Ī»Ī¹ Ī»ĪµĪ¼Ī± ĻĪ±Ī²Ī±ĻĪøĪ±Ī½Ī¹; ĻĪæįæ¦Ļ’ į¼ĻĻĪ¹Ī½, ĪĪµį½³ Ī¼ĪæĻ ĪøĪµį½³ Ī¼ĪæĻ , į¼±Ī½Ī±Ļį½· Ī¼Īµ į¼Ī³ĪŗĪ±Ļį½³Ī»Ī¹ĻĪµĻ; – ĪĪĪ¤Ī ĪĪĪĪĪĪĪĪ 27:46
Here is how Gregory of Nazianzus or Gregory the Theologian (329 ā 390 A.D.) understands this passage:
He who destroyed my curse was Himself called a curse for my sake (Gal. 3:13). He who takes away the worldās sin was Himself called sin (2 Cor. 5:21). He who took the place of the old Adam was called a new Adam (1 Cor. 15:45-47). Likewise, He makes my disobedience His own, as the Head of His whole body. For as long as I am sinful and rebellious, by my rejection of God and by my sinful passions, for just so long Christ Himself is called sinful on my account! But when He has brought all things into obedience to Himself, through their acceptance of Him and their own transformation, then His state of humble obedience to the Father will be over, as He brings me to God in a state of salvation…
ThusĀ in carrying our salvation, Christ makes our condition His very own. This, I think, is how to understand the words, āMy God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?ā (Matt. 27:46). It wasnāt the Son, in His own person, whom the Father forsook. Nor was He forsaken by His own divinity, as some think, as ifĀ HisĀ divine natureĀ wereĀ frightened of the cross, and fled from Him in His sufferings. After all, one forced the divine Son to be born on earth in the first place, or to be impaled on the cross! But as I said, Christ was, in Himself, representing usĀ ā and we were the ones who were forsaken and rejected, before He came to save us. But now, by the sufferings of Him who could not suffer, we have been reconciled to God and saved. Likewise, He makes our foolishness and our sins His own. This is why He says what we read in the Twenty-First Psalm. Itās very clear that the Psalm is speaking of Christ.1
In the first paragraph we see the theme ofĀ mirificaĀ commutatioĀ (āwonderful exchangeā), and doctrine of the vicarious humanity of Christ that motivated Karl Barth in his doctrine of election. He writes (as we have observed in a recent post):
The election of grace is the eternal beginning of all the ways and works of God in Jesus Christ. In Jesus Christ God in His free grace determines Himself for sinful man and sinful man for Himself. He therefore takes upon Himself the rejection of man with all its consequences, andĀ electsĀ man to participation in His own glory.2
This is an important aspect to emphasize, in a history of interpretation sense, with particular effort to demonstrate that Barth wasnāt making a novel claim in his doctrine of election; even if it was ānovelā in its juxtaposition with scholastic Reformed and modern readings.
But beyond that, and this is what I want to underscore most prominently in this post: we can see how someone as early asĀ NanzianzusĀ was wrestling with the relationship between the two-natures in the singular person of Jesus Christ. He doesnāt defer to a Lutheran sort ofĀ communicatoĀ idiomatum, but instead operates with an almost Nestorian-like (which the Lutheran would charge Calvinists or the Reformed with latterly, relative toĀ Nanzianzus)Ā focus on the vicarious humanity doing the suffering [on the cross] whilst the ground of His person, in the eternal Logos, remains untouched. Hereās a nice summary of how the various traditions understand the ācommunication of propertiesā (communicatioĀ idiomatum), and how that implicates the Christās āforsakennessā on the cross:
Roman Catholics and Lutherans hold their respective views based on their shared understanding of theĀ communicatioĀ idiomatum, the communication of properties or attributes of the two natures of Christ. For both traditions, the divine nature of Christ communicates (or shares) divine attributes such as omnipresence to His human nature; thus, Christās physical body can be in several locations atĀ once.
Reformed theology rejects this view of the communication of attributes as violating historic, orthodox Christology. According to the Council of Chalcedon, the two natures of Christ are inseparably united in the one divine person of the Son of God without confusion, mixture, or change. The divine nature remains truly divine and the human nature remains truly human, each retaining its own attributes. This must be so. If Christās humanity acquires a divine attribute, Jesus is no longer truly human and cannot represent other human beings before God or atone for theirĀ sin.
For Reformed theology, theĀ communicatioĀ idiomatumĀ means the attributes of each of Christās natures are communicated to the person of Christ. We can predicate what is true of each nature to Christās person. So, the person of Christ is omnipresent, but not according to His human nature. He is omnipresent according to His divine nature because only deity is omnipresent. Likewise, the person of Christ died on the cross, but Jesus experienced death according to His human nature, for the divine nature is not subject to death andĀ decay.3
According to the above description, Gregory is simply being a good proto-ChalcedonianĀ Christologian; that is prior to the convening of the Council of Chalcedon in 451 A.D. For the Chalcedonian, or more accurately, the Reformed perspective, the natures of Christ, both human and Divine, find their predication in and from theĀ singularĀ personalisĀ of Jesus Christ. So, from this frame, Christās humiliation in the incarnation and atonement has grounding in the single person of the whole Christ, but within the whole Christ (think from a qualifiedĀ ChristusĀ totus) it is possible, and necessary, to think in terms of the operations of both his Divine and human natures per those natures as defined by Christās person (so there is a dialectic afoot). This gets into the Reformed understanding of what has been called theĀ extraĀ CalvinisticumĀ as well; but let us simply acknowledge that for the moment, and develop that later.
I think theĀ TheologianāsĀ take above is adequate, but requires further theological development; which my friend Darren Sumner does in his book titled,Ā Karl Barth and the Incarnation: Christology and the Humility of God.Ā Sumner offers a constructive, and yet Reformed retrieval of this important doctrine; in regard to thinking about the āforsakennessā of Christ, from both Lutheran and Reformed trajectories. But of course, Darren does so, admirably, from within the Christological dialectic that Barth offers in his theology in general, and in his doctrine of election, in particular. Suffice it to say, what remains the major thrust is the significance of emphasizing how the natures of Christ are predicated within the person of Christ, and to think these things from there; even if that negates (or not) what some have called the LogosĀ asarkos.Ā
Conclusion
I sort of got lost in the underbrush of the trees in my sketch of things here. But hopefully the reader can appreciate the complexities involved with thinking about how theĀ sui generisĀ reality of God become human in Jesus Christ ought to impact this discussion. What remains true, from my perspective, is that the Son of Man freely chose our forsakenness, so that we might ultimately participate in his exaltedness through His resurrected and re-created humanity (pro nobis). God surely āsufferedā in the incarnation and crucifixion, and yet His divinity remained divine; and this is the mystery of it all. God has humanity in Jesus Christ, and chose freely to forever be defined by that humanity for-our-sakes (DeusĀ incarnandus). And yet, His choice to be defined by Christās elected humanity, for-our-sakes, is grounded first inĀ whoĀ He eternally is as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. So,Ā GodĀ is who God has always already been, it is just that within His who-ness as God, because of this, He freely chose to become something ānew,ā in the sense thatĀ enfleshmentĀ is distinct from God, but now eternally who God has chosen to be for us in Christ. It is within this remaining mystery that God suffered; and He did so, asĀ NanzianzusĀ rightly underscores, as theĀ Theanthropos, or as the God-man, who came to have capacity to suffer as a human insofar as God has humanity in Jesus Christ.
Does this solve things for you? Probably not in the way you would like, or the way I would like. But this is what happens when us plebeians are confronted by the NovumĀ of Godās life for us in Jesus Christ. I prefer to worship at the majestic reality of Godās forsakenness for us in Christ. But to do so withĀ someĀ understanding; which includes his exaltedness in the same breath. He is the God who makes the impossible possible, and it is because of this that we have been allowed to participate in the eternal life of the triune God; that is because He chose āto become us that we might become Himāāthis is Godās Grace.
1Ā Gregory Nazianzus,Ā The Early Church Fathers,Ā edited by Nick Needham (Scotland: Christian Focus Publications, 2017), March 16thĀ reading. Gregory refers to Psalm 21 rather than 22. That is because he was referring to the LXX or the Septuagint, which is the Greek translation of the Old Testament that he would have had available at his time. The chapterification was off by one relative to our translations today.Ā
2Ā Karl Barth,Ā Church DogmaticsĀ II/2 Ā§32-33: Study Edition (New York, New York: T&T Clark, 2010), 99.Ā
3Ā Ligonier Ministries,Ā A Communication of Attributes,Ā accessed 06-10-2021.
The following comes after a long small print section from Karl Barth. I wanted to transcribe the whole thing, but I neither have the time nor the energy; the following will have to suffice. What we will be reading is a summary, by Barth, of the small print section I just mentioned. It is 
one of the richest things I have ever read on how a Christian ought to think the violence and brutality of the Old Testament. Rather than reading all of that away as reflecting a genocidal God of war, it does the canonical soul well if we simply read the Old Testament as if its whole telos is indeed Jesus Christ. If we do this, the seemingly futile brutality and judgment and wrath of God we see often displayed on its pages comes to make sense; but only if understood from the frame of reference that understands that Jesus Christ is the ineffable God who holds all reality together, ensarkos. Barth, a modern (but orthodox) theologian doesnāt attempt to explain away the violence of the āOld Testament Godā (like Pete Enns et al does); instead, true to form, he contextualizes it in the cruciformed shape of Godās immortal and ultimate life. Barth writes (in brief):
The meaning of the death of Jesus Christ is that there Godās condemning and punishing righteousness broke out, really smiting and piercing human sin, man as sinner, and sinful Israel. It did really fall on the sin of Israel, our sin and us sinners. It did so in such a way that in what happened there (not to Israel, or to us, but to Jesus Christ) the righteousness of God which we have offended was really revealed and satisfied. Yet it did so in such a way that it did not happen to Israel or to us, but for Israel, for us. What was suffered there on Israelās account and ours, was suffered for Israel and for us. The wrath of God which we had merited, by which we must have been annihilated and would long since have been annihilated, was now in our place borne and suffered as though it had smitten us and yet in such a way that it did not smite us and can no more smite us. The reason why the No Spoken on Good Friday is so terrible, but why there is already concealed in it the Eastertide Yes of Godās righteousness, is that He who on the cross took upon Himself and suffered the wrath of God was no other than Godās own Son, and therefore the eternal God Himself in the unity with human nature which He freely accepted in His transcendent mercy.[1]
If you read closely you can see Athanasius (i.e. annihilation language) informing Barth; and you can see his thinking forming towards what is only nascent in Barthās thought in regard to a doctrine of election (which comes in the next volume II/2). This is an extremely aesthetically pleasing statement from Barth, for all types of reasons. It is conceptually rich with thinking on Godās No hidden in the Yes of God; with a way to read the OT in a Christ concentration; with a conception of atonement theory wherein Godās wrath is taken by God Himself in the Son, the Judge judged. The mystery, majesty, and yet concreteness of it all, particularly as Barth is able to explicate things in his way, is rather astounding; it is an occasion of worship for me. To contemplate the depth dimensional realities of the Christ, in the sort of symphonic ways that Barth is masterful at, is such an edifying experience. This is why I read Barth, because he points beyond his frail and sinful self, and points to His Savior, and mine, Jesus Christ.
[1] Karl Barth,Ā Church Dogmatics II/1 Ā§30 The Doctrine of God: Study EditionĀ (London: T&T Clark, 2009), 145.
It seems as if we have domesticated everything in our culture, even sin. But this is precisely what Jesus will not let us do; this is precisely what the reality of the cross will not 
let us do. The prophet Jeremiah writes in 17.9:
āTheĀ heartĀ isĀ deceitful above allĀ things, AndĀ desperately wicked; Who can know it?
And the Apostle Paul following writes in Romans 3:
10Ā As it is written: āThere is none righteous, no, not one; 11Ā There is none who understands; There is none who seeks after God. 12Ā They have all turned aside; They have together become unprofitable; There is none who does good, no, not one.ā 13Ā āTheirĀ throatĀ isĀ an openĀ tomb; With their tongues they have practiced deceitā; āThe poison of aspsĀ isĀ under their lipsā; 14Ā āWhoseĀ mouthĀ isĀ full of cursing and bitterness.ā 15Ā āTheirĀ feetĀ areĀ swift to shed blood; 16Ā Destruction and miseryĀ areĀ in their ways; 17Ā And the way of peace they have not known.ā 18Ā āThereĀ is no fear of God before their eyes.ā
Karl Barth famously, and in keeping with his normal way, believes we can only know the depths of evil and sin by its reference to Christ. He believes that only as we concentrate on whom Christ is in His righteousness, can the gravity of sin come to be known. Barth works out his doctrine of evil (or ānothingnessā) through his doctrine of election. For Barth, nothingness, or āevilā is what God passes over and negates through the incarnation and cross-work of Jesus Christ. Mark Lindsay, after much development, writes the following:
At this place, we must qualify our earlier comment that God is not threatened by Nothingness. In the incarnation, God Himself becomes a creature and thus takes upon Himself the creatureās sin, guilt and misery. In āwhat befalls this man God pronounces His No to the bitter end.ā The entire fury of Nothingness ā and of Godās wrath directed towards it ā falls upon Christ āin all its dreadful fulnessā¦ā Precisely, however, because this man is also God, āNothingness could not master this victim.ā It had power over the creature. It could contradict and oppose it and break down its defences. It could make it its slave and instrument and therefore its victim. But it was impotent against the God who humbled Himself, and Himself became a creature, and thus exposed Himself to its power and resisted it.
By confronting and decisively triumphing over Nothingness in Jesus Christ, God has relegated it to the past. In the light of the cross and the empty tomb, āthere is no sense in which it can be affirmed that nothingness has any objective existenceā¦ā Barth rejects outright the suggestion that radical evil exists in the form of an eternal antithesis. On the contrary, he insists that it has no perpetuity. It is neither created by God, nor maintained in a covenantal relationship with Him. Thus, āwe should not get involved in the logical dialectic that if God loves, elects and affirms eternally he must also hate and therefore reject and negate eternally. There is nothing to make Godās activity on the left hand as necessary and perpetual as His activity on the right.ā Nothingness has been brought to its end, no longer having even the transient and temporary existence it once had. On this note of ācosmic optimismā, Barth concludes his presentation of his doctrine.[1]
We are reminded of Athanasiusā thinking on evil and sin in his little book On the Incarnation as we read Barthās own uniquely worked out conception of evil and sin. Inherent to Barthās understanding there is genuine hope. Because he doesnāt give evil (and its expression in sinful acts) a symmetrical place to Godās work and righteousness in Christ, he offers a way to think of evil/sin as a vanquished foe that in the end will be fully wiped out in a realized way. What stands out, in Lindsayās description, is how it took God in Christ alone to overcome the wiles of evilās reach into the human heart; and thus into all of creation.
It doesnāt seem as if folks appreciate just how deep rooted and satanically conditioned their āold heartsā are outwith Jesus Christ. When you hear the āworldā speak you would think that they have seemingly overcome evil all by themselves; as if they have an objectively established goodness inherent to who they are, through which they are able to look āoutā and make judgments about good and evil as if the latter doesnāt ultimately affect them. On the contrary, the incarnation and cross of Jesus Christ asserts and proves just the opposite. There is no one good, and all our hearts are just as evil as the terroristās who shot up the mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand. The cross of Christ will not allow any of us to escape the terror embedded in each and every one of our hearts.
To press this further, Thomas Torrance underscores just how deep our darkness is by, like Barth, focusing on the depths God had to go to de-root it from our very ābeingsā as human beings. Torrance writes on the ontological character of the atoning work of Christ, this way:
It is above all in the Cross of Christ that evil is unmasked for what it actually is, in its inconceivable wickedness and malevolence, in its sheer contradiction of the love of God incarnate in Jesus Christ, in its undiluted enmity to God himselfānot to mention the way in which it operates under the cover of the right and the good and the lawful. That the infinite God should take the way of the Cross to save mankind from the pit of evil which has engulfed it and deceived it, is the measure of the evil of evil: its depth is revealed to be āabsymalā (literally, āwithout bottomā). However, it is only from the vantage point of Godās victory over evil in the resurrection of Christ, from the bridge which in him God has overthrown across the chasm of evil that has opened up in our violence and death and guilt, that we may look into the full horror of it all and not be destroyed in the withering of our souls through misanthropy, pessimism, and despair. What hope could there ever be for a humanity that crucifies the incarnate love of God and sets itself implacably against the order of divine love even at the point of its atoning and healing operation? But the resurrection tells us that evil, even this abysmal evil, does not and cannot have the last word, for that belongs to the love of God which has negated evil once and for all and which through the Cross and resurrection is able to make all things work together for good, so that nothing in the end will ever separate us from the love of God. It is from the heart of that love in the resurrected Son of God that we may reflect on the radical nature of evil without suffering morbid mesmerization or resurrection and crucifixion events, which belong inseparably together, has behind it the incarnation, the staggering fact that God himself has come directly into our creaturely being to become one of us, for our sakes. Thus the incarnation, passion, and resurrection conjointly tell us that far from evil having to do only with human hearts and minds, it has become entrenched in the ontological depths of created existence and that it is only from within those ontological depths that God could get at the heart of evil in order to destroy it, and set about rebuilding what he had made to be good. (We have to think of that as the only way that God ācouldā take, for the fact that he has as a matter of fact taken this way in the freedom of his grace excludes any other possibility from our consideration.) It is surely in the light of this ontological salvation that we are to understand the so-called ānature of miraclesā, as well as the resurrection of Jesus from death, for they represent not a suspension of the natural or created order but the very reverse, the recreation of the natural order wherever it suffers from decay or damage or corruption or disorder through evil. God does not give up his claim that the creation is āgoodā, but insists on upholding that claim by incarnating within the creation the personal presence of his own Logos, the creative and ordering source of the creation, thereby pledging his own eternal constancy and rationality as the ground for the redemption and final establishment of all created reality.[2]
Like Barth, Torrance points up the hope we have because of what Christ has won for humanity. But at the same moment, he also points out just how deep and pervasive sin is in the hearts of men and women, boys and girls. If it took God to become human to deal with each of our ādesperately wickedā hearts, how wicked do you think that makes us left to ourselves?
If the world is able to look out and recognize evil, it is only because they live under the grace and mercy of God given for it in Jesus Christ. And yet even as they rightly look at the despicable act that just took place in New Zealand, and condemn it as evil, they condemn themselves; that is, if they remain in an unrepentant state before God. Not only that, they confirm, unconsciously, the righteous judgment of God that not only hangs over terroristsā heads, but their own. The spiritually dead heart can fabricate a state of self-righteousness only insofar as it borrows that righteousness from the economy of Godās Kingdom in Christ as that has invaded and continues to invade the world through the risen Christās life. Christās life for the world, the resurrected humanity, in itself, while standing as Godās Yes for the world, at the same moment issues a resounding No to the evil and sin that ALL humanity lives within (realized at various degrees or not). Godās Yes has already run its course and been actualized in the new humanity of Christ, as such anything outside of that lives in Godās No; which ultimately is hell.
Christians do not have ultimate solidarity with the world, even when the world, in parasitic fashion comes to some sort of sense of the heinous nature of evil. This does not mean Christians are superior to their pagan friends, it just means that Christians have an actual basis from which to rightly call darkness darkness and light light; this doesnāt mean Christians consistently live this way. Often Christians operate more like the pagan culture than the heavenly; which is why Godās Grace and Mercy will always remain so important.
[1] Mark R. Lindsay,Ā Barth, Israel, and Jesus: Karl Barthās Theology of Israel(UK/USA: Ashgate Publishing, 2007), 48-52.
[2] Thomas F. Torrance,Ā Divine And Contingent OrderĀ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981), 115-16.